The 10 worst Sonic friends

The Hedgehog has about 10,000 furry pals. Here's the worst of a bad lot

Blaze the Cat

Another one for the "unnecessary" pile, Blaze the Cat's inclusion in Sonic Rush really added nothing to the proceedings, save for yet another ham-fisted attempt at telling a low-grade JRPG story in a game that didn't need any narrative at all. Her one saving grace is that she's not excruciatingly annoying like Chip. This is only because she's perishingly boring, though. Dull, lifeless, completely without personality or charm, she is an utter non-entity. Even worse, Sega still persists with her every now and then. A waste of everybody's time.

Shadow the
Hedgehog

A fairly obvious one, Shadow the Hedgehog is mainly a bastion of wasted potential as opposed to an inherently odious character. Quite ironic that his gimmick is "perfection" when everything he's ever done is in dire need of improvement. The "dark" version of a main character is an old gimmick, but one that works. Of course, with this being Sonic, it had to get screwed up, so he was given a bestial love story and a miserable "edgy" persona that comes off like a 12-year-old's idea of what "deep" means. He's become less and less of an effectual rival since he debut in Sonic Adventure 2, to the point where he's now a meaningless bit player as opposed to Sonic's ultimate rival.

We must, of course, pay special attention to Shadow's eponymous action game, in which he wielded guns and enjoyed some of the worst action platforming of the last generation, complete with busted mechanics, obnoxious pitfall deaths, uninspired shooting, and yet another demented storyline that nobody asked for. Shadow is the ultimate example of a good idea gone rotten.

Amy Rose

Total bitch.

Cream the Rabbit

Cream the Rabbit is an especially nettlesome proposition, as she represents perhaps everything that's wrong with Sonic the Hedgehog characters. Her very name is an example of the lazy, dimwitted creation of these furry freaks. Cream the Rabbit. I mean, seriously? Seriously!? The "random word combined with random animal" school of character naming has never been so clear and insultingly obvious. Cream... Cream the Rabbit. It's beyond pathetic.

It doesn't help that she looks like she has a mental disorder and has never done anything in the history of everything, aside from satiate someone's fetish for drawing underage woodland creatures in small dresses. Oh, and she carries around a little Chaos bastard called Cheese. How witty. Someone step on this rabbit's neck and discharge a shotgun into the back of her cranium, please.

Tails

Yes, you read that correctly. The final and most important entrant into this list of the top 10 worst Sonic friends is the one that started it all: Miles "Tails" Prower. You might find yourself confused at this entry, somehow deluding yourself into thinking Tails is "alright" because he was introduced during the golden years of Sonic's past. However, you are deluded. Tails is the worst Sonic friend ever because he started it all. The very first Sonic sequel, Sonic the Hedgehog 2, introduced the concept of the very first Sonic friend, Miles Prower. It was the beginning of a tradition that would end with roughly 500,000 Sonic friends spread across years of shovelware and shite.

Even if we discard the terrible chain of events that Tails' birth kick started, there's no escaping from the fact that he's always been a crap character. In Sonic 2, he was a complete hindrance, especially on the bonus stages where his "help" is almost guaranteed to cost Chaos Emeralds. In recent years, he's been given the voice of an emasculated Ash Ketchum (if Ash can get more emasculated than he already is) and all the narrative relevance of an empty box of Cookie Crisp.

For never being a good character, and acting as the progenitor of the entire Sonic friend phenomenon, Tails is hereby dubbed the worst Sonic friend of all time. Now and forever.

Jan 18, 2011

8 game characters we'd go furry for If it wears people clothes, it's alright

The rise, fall and deafening crash of Sonic the Hedgehog A teary-eyed examination of gaming's greatest casualty

The Top 7… Modern Sonic games that don't suck Proof that gaming’s biggest punching bag hasn’t entirely lost its way